Clay Analyses of Archaic Greek Pottery

Abstract

The study of Greek pottery of the Archaic period has reached the point at which most groups can be identified on stylistic grounds alone and confidently assigned to their place of manufacture, while in some groups works of individual studios, painters, and potters can be detected. There remain, however, both many problem pieces whose origin is disputed or unknown, and some major classes about which, for example, it is still possible to argue whether they were made in Italy or Greece. This is a field in which the techniques of clay analysis might prove beneficent, and this article presents the provisional results of the first of a series of tests designed to explore this potential.